ACSR Votes on Nine Proxy Issues On South Africa, Hiring, Contributions

The Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility continued its brisk pace on proxy resolution decisions Tuesday, voting on nine resolutions on equal employment and corporate political activities and operations in South Africa.

The ACSR supported for the third time this year a resolution calling on a corporation--this time Getty Oil--to withdraw its operations from Namibia, an illegally-held South African colony.

However, the committee rejected a resolution calling on IBM to establish a review committee on its operations in South Africa, saying that the review committee is unnecessary because "IBM's South African operations are receiving attention at top management levels."

Two resolutions calling for disclosure of corporate equal employment figures got the ACSR's unanimous rejection. The ACSR said that both IBM and Ford Motor Company already disclose enough information in their annual reports to make more mandatory disclosure unnecessary.

On resolutions aimed at corporate political activities, the ACSR:

*Unanimously supported resolutions calling on International Telephone and Telegraph and Ford to disclose their direct and indirect political contributions during the past year;

*Supported a resolution saying that Phillips Petroleum's stockholders "deplore" its illegal contribution to President Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign; and

*Split on a resolution prohibiting ITT from making any future political contributions, and supported a near-identical resolution aimed at Phillips.